The use of stylus with touch screens is well established, but some existing technologies have disadvantages of one or more of cost, performance and reliability. Touch screen designs have incorporated many different technologies including resistive, capacitive, inductive, and radio frequency sensing arrays.
A capacitive stylus uses a power source (e.g., a battery) to generate a transmit (TX) signal at the tip of the stylus. Increasing the TX signal (e.g., an electrical current) will allow the touch screen sensing system to better track the position of a stylus that is contacting or hovering over a touch screen (e.g., a capacitive sense array). However, increasing the TX signal will cause an increase in the power consumption of the capacitive stylus. The power source of the capacitive stylus may be not be capable of supplying the extra power (e.g., voltage) to increase the TX signal or the power source of the capacitive stylus may not be capable of supplying the extra power for an extended period of time. For example, the power source may be a battery which is not capable of generating the extra power to increase the TX signal. In another example, if the battery is capable of generating the extra power to increase the TX signal, this may result in draining the battery faster which shortens the time a user can use the capacitive stylus.